- While the government has taken over the main television
networks in recent years, major newspapers have remained in private hands,
but despite their ostensible independence, they may be confined by their
own set of restrictions in criticizing the state.
-
- The media industry has changed shape drastically since
the mid-1990s, when squabbles between powerful magnates who controlled
television stations and newspapers spilled out into broadcasts and onto
the printed page.
-
- When state assets were being divided up in privatization
sales during the 1990s, business tycoons used the media to earn favors
from government functionaries through properly aimed mudslinging or praise.
-
- "Investors paid money without counting on the publication's
profitability, but they got better access to resources that were being
privatized," said Ivan Zasursky, head of a research department at
the Moscow State University's Journalism School and deputy chief of the
Internet company Rambler. "Now this process is over."
-
- The end of privatization handouts and oligarch wars has
brought about a new approach to running daily newspapers.
-
- "It is getting increasingly business-like,"
said Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst with Washington-funded Radio Liberty.
"The success of the editorial policy is directly linked to an increase
in circulation."
-
- The less tolerant political climate under President Vladimir
Putin has also caused some more ominous changes.
-
- Government actions against a free press have bred self-censorship
among some journalists. And since most newspapers are owned by companies
that have business interests in other spheres, they may be influenced by
their owners' wish to keep friendly relations with the state.
-
- "The newspapers have become hostages of the relations
between their owners and the authorities," Zasursky said.
-
- One of the reasons behind the print market's transition
to a more capitalist approach is newspapers' ineffectiveness, relative
to television, as a political instrument -- as media magnates, stripped
of their television assets, seemed quick to realize.
-
- TV broadcasts remain a political instrument -- now promoting
the views of Putin's administration -- while newspaper publishing is evolving
into something more like a business venture.
-
- "There is no other way," said Yevgeny Abov,
deputy chief of the Prof-Media holding, through which metals magnate Vladimir
Potanin owns the Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda dailies, and which also
holds a 35 percent stake in Independent Media, the parent company of The
Moscow Times.
-
- "Either they turn into a media business mainly guided
by the criteria of reader audience, share of the market and popularity,
or they lose their audiences altogether. They become fully dependent on
non-media sources of financing, and those sources sooner or later run out."
-
- The laws of the market have brought considerable diversity
to newspaper publishing. While most TV broadcasts have been reduced to
indistinguishable, and undistinguished, pro-Kremlin reports, newspapers
seem to be tailoring their coverage to their specific audiences.
-
- Kommersant, for instance, is written for educated professionals
with an interest in finance, while Komsomolskaya Pravda caters to a wide
group of average readers with an interest in flamboyant entertainment stories,
consumer tips and just a bit of politics.
-
- Some newspapers report making money -- no small feat
in a business where breaking even is often considered an achievement.
-
- Komsomolskaya Pravda is a significant money-earner, Abov
said, refusing to disclose specific figures. Izvestia reported pretax profits
of about 28.4 million rubles (nearly $1 million) in 2002.
-
- Kommersant expects to make several million dollars in
pretax profits this year, said editor Andrei Vasilyev, who also heads the
Kommersant publishing house.
-
- But even the most successful newspapers cannot match
television's popularity. Newspapers have lost a lot of readers since the
Soviet era, and polling data show the figures are still going down.
-
- The house-to-house deliveries of Pravda in the Soviet
days ensured wide circulation, and the scarcity of other sources of information
led many Russians to perfect the skill of reading between the lines.
-
- Now newspapers have to compete not only with a greater
number of television stations, but also with electronic media and an array
of general interest magazines.
-
- Newspapers also seem to be paying for their sins of the
1990s, when unabashed promotion of their owners' views appeared to have
undermined their credibility.
-
- http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/11/14/002.html
|
